Hutchence Syndrome

If someone covers their eyes with their hands and peers at you through a 10mm gap, you are either wearing too much neon or doing something embarrassing. And unless you direct traffic, it’s more likely to be the latter. Take the time Kylie went all blonde-sexy-chained-rocker after dating Michael Hutchence. I was peering through my fingers begging her to stop but then it irked me that she’d undergone an evolution for some man. Sexual Hutchence maybe, but he was still some man. Mostly, I was a bit like “stop trying to be something you’re not, Kylie”.
My brother Spike was hit by Hutchence Syndrome when he started working in banking. It was around the time we stopped getting on. He went from geeky funny boy with a passion for Super Mario, to institutionalised moron, over night. Now, he is an embarrassing collage of all the things he finds impressive and glamorous; a pair of salmon chinos here (his multimillionaire boss wears them everyday) a Frankie Say Relax tshirt there (the captain of his rugby team wore one last year in as part of the ironic 80s revival) and always a quiff in recognition of Mark Lamarr’s irritating early days on The Word.
Anyway, chinos don’t look good on men with a bit of weight on their hips. Particularly when paired with a quiff. Spike looks and sounds like a character from The Beano.

So this new female-manager- of- the- football -team -girlfriend is the latest addition to his moronic collage of other people’s influences. He’ll have competed against every one of his friends and every member of the football team just so he can say he was The Chosen One. I bet he doesn’t even know what borough she lives in. Or maybe he’s trying to buy the whole neighbourhood with his bonus, just to be like his boss.

Bernard is another one who could do with just being himself but, unlike Spike and Kylie, at least he’s honest about it. He shouldn’t be in fashion and he knows this. He should be cooking or photographing food. He talks about biscotti, muffins, coffee and stews in pornographic terms. But the problem with Bernard is that he was the fat kid who got bullied at school and in order to avoid those days repeating themselves, he’s gone into an industry where no one eats. The net effect is that he’s a pair of whittled square pegs in the round hole that is fashion. Why am I telling you this? Because I don’t want to judge him too harshly when I tell you what happened next.